


Your Theories Catch Fire

by plinys



Series: ABC Fic Challenge [1]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: M/M, Smoking, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3560861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Those things will kill you."</p><p>“Yeah, and this won’t?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Theories Catch Fire

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to do an alphabet writing challenge and the first word is "addiction," which after seeing a gif set of Taron smoking developed into this fic. After writing it, I realize this could probably be read as platonic (oops), really I just wanted smoking-Eggsy to be a thing. 
> 
> (also apologies for any mistakes, it's all still unbeta'd cause i don't have a beta for this fandom yet...)

1

The first time he smokes, he’s barely more than a kid.

He's still got knobby knees and the school uniform on, cheeks too red and life too innocently led. 

They’re crowded around the steps after school, the cool kids, and he wants so desperately to fit in that he takes the offering, breathing in a generous inhale when he should be exhaling.

They laugh at him.

He pretends he likes the burn, tells himself he could get used to it.

Carefully he watches as one of the older kids show him carefully how it is done, making sure he doesn’t burn his fingers or cough again.

It’s fun, living in the moment, and after a while it becomes as easy as riding a bike. 

They're not laughing in the end, and he makes promises to join them the next day and the day after that.

His first thought when he leaves is that his mum is going to kill him.

His second thought is _fuck it_.

It won't be the last time that second thought plays through his mind. 

For all his worrying, she doesn’t even notice the scent of smoke that clings to his clothing, just presses a kiss into his cheek and says, “Eggsy, love, there’s someone I’d like you too meet.”

 

2

He gets used having the taste on his lips, the feeling in the back of his throat, the careful way it sits between his fingers.

He learns it so well, that the lack becomes a noticeable ache.

The first thing he steals is a pack of smokes.

He and his mates play a trick on the cashier, slipping back to grab something that doesn’t belong to him.

There’s something there, a rush that he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to replicate.

And there’s nothing quiet as satisfying as the feeling of stolen smoke settling in his lungs.

 

3

Everyone smoked in the Marines.

It had just been some unspoken rule: that he could ask if anybody had a lighter and a room full of people would offer them up to him in reply.

He should have expected that things would be different with the Kingsmen.

He should have expected that all the posh talk of being gentlemen and wearing suits would lend to a different environment.

Still it came as a bit of a shock the see the surprise in all of their faces when he asked if could borrow a lighter.

Which is why even when he'd eventually managed to bum a lighter off Merlin, he still fiddles with the pack in their dormitories, just to watch the displeasure settle on the faces of his fellow trainees.

It wasn't like he'd actually light one up in there, after all had been given strict instructions not to smoke inside their dormitories when Merlin had given him the lighter, and he wasn't keen on getting kicked out because of a smoke.

He's got a spot on the ground all picked out for when really wants to smoke and not just tease. 

“Those things will kill you,” Roxy tells him, one night when he's doing it again. 

She probably thinks she's doing a kindness, warning him off of reckless behavior in the way a friend would, but she doesn't understand.

He fixes her a smirk in reply, before gesturing around at the lot of them, "yeah, and this won’t?”

If he doesn't light one up for a while after that, well it has nothing to do with her words, not really. 

 

4

There’s a gravestone, with letters he’s stared at so many times that he can feel them imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

That’s what happens when people die; you bury them and try to move on.

Except nobody talks about the moving on part.

The impossibility of it all.

“There wasn’t even a fucking body,” he hisses out, not sure who he’s talking to – the cemetery is empty, his glasses turned off and shoved somewhere back in the car – and honestly he’s thankful that nobody has to hear him repeat the conversation he’s had with himself too many times to count.

The stone is cold against his back as he slumps down against it.

Technically he quit during training, at least he’d intended to.

He stopped carrying a pack around, stopped asking to borrow a lighter.

Then there, were moments like this - moments since the whole world went to shit and _saved_ it - that he just had to.

His fingers shake slightly, as he flicks the lighter on, and it takes nearly two times before he can manage to get it lit.

But when he does the bitter taste of the smoke is only mildly satisfying.

For a second Eggsy can imagine a voice in the back of his head, one that sounds mildly disappointed and frighteningly like Harry’s, expressing disapproval.

He can easily imagine it, ‘ _a gentleman doesn’t sit on the ground and take a smoke’_ , yeah something like that, a bit more posh, but god- what he wouldn’t give to hear Harry saying those words to him.

“I’ll give it all up if you bring him back,” he tells a god he doesn’t even believe in, “you do that one last solid for me, and I’ll quit cold turkey, for real this time, just fucking do it.”

There’s no answer.

He didn’t expect one, his life isn’t _that_ kind of story.

Still he pushes the word, “please,” out of his lips with the next exhale of smoke, as though that’ll make any difference.

He still doesn’t believe in any of that religious nonsense, but when a few minutes later rain pours down over him, soaking the pack of smokes in his lap and extinguishing the one between his fingers, he can’t help himself from hoping that it’s a sign not just the temperamental London weather

 

5

He’s still not sure if he believes in any of it.

But this time his lighter is a hand grenade and there’s a ghost appearing right before his eyes.

 

 

\+ 1

There’s smoke curling around his fingers, a contrast to the otherwise clear night.

He was supposed to have quit.

He sort of swore that he would.

It’s been weeks and he’s sure it’s all real now, well about as sure as he’s going to be, there’s still a part of him that wakes up and wonders if this whole thing hasn’t been one long awful dream. This helps a bit, in its own weird way.

Silently he hopes that whatever supreme being there is in this world doesn’t decide to smite him right then and there.

“I thought you quit,” comes a voice, that is better than any gods. 

There’s a tightness in his chest at the sound of that voice, which has nothing to do with the smoke trapped inside his lungs, and everything to do with the fact that against all odds _Harry Hart_ is alive. He's still not entirely sure how that happened.

“I did,” he insists, though his actions clearly betray the truth of it all, so he corrects it to, "I'm going to."

He doesn’t have to look over to know that Harry’s got one of those displeased looks on his face, as the older man settles down beside him.

It seems so natural to offer the cigarette out like a peace offering.

When Harry takes it from him, he expects that it’ll be put out and that they’ll finally have that long talk that he had been doing everything to avoid.

Instead he watches with curiosity as Harry brings it up to his lips for an uncharacteristic drag.

“I never understood the appeal,” Harry admits, after breathing out.

He makes quite the picture, a man in a fancy suit, with smoke coming out from his lips. 

“It’s about cheating death.”

“I suppose I would know something about that, wouldn’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ plinys?


End file.
